A Day and A Lifetime
by Baratsuki
Summary: It takes a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone, but it takes a lifetime to forget someone. With the right person, you'll never have to forget. Two-parter for now, hope you like it :D


'I don't want to be here…' John thinks to himself as he sits, tied to a tree in the middle of the night, hidden in Hyde Park. John wants to be home, watching telly with Mrs. Hudson and cracking jokes about the fact that his girlfriend was the only thing holding him to his job. She was, really, because as soon as Sarah broke up with him, he quit. He wasn't sure why he did it, or why he proceeded to go home and sleep for three hours afterwards. He really wasn't sure why he offered to help Sherlock with his egg experiment because that went horribly wrong, and Mrs. Hudson was not pleased about having to help him clean raw egg yolk out of her vintage fur coat. All he knew was that he didn't mind, and of course, if it meant working and taking his mind off of the real world for a while, nothing bothered him, really. John, truly, had spent his entire life under that philosophy, beginning when he started primary school.

His mother was like any other young mother, and saw him off to school every morning, walking him at least halfway to Primary School. She stayed home most of the day, sometimes going out to play cards with some other women in the village, but she was always home in time for John, at least, when he was small. John was like any other boy, too, always keeping his heart at its most unique. After a while, though, his mother told him she was very ill. It wasn't unlike her to be a hypochondriac to get out of doing things she didn't want to do, but this was different. She stopped walking him to school, stopped going out during the day, and she began to drink. John, of course, was too young to understand why it was such a bad thing, until his sister came home. Harriet Watson was seventeen and of sound mind and body. Alcohol was the last thing on her mind when she came home to take care of a seven year old John. Alcohol was something she hated, wanted thrown to the pits of hell, and did everything in her power to protect young John from. She took him to school, a proud older sister, holding her head high despite the looks she attracted from other villagers. John knew Harriet was different, and it didn't bother him at all, but it bothered the other children, who regarded him with a certain amount of caution, their mothers regarding him with pity. He was chosen last for sports teams, invited to children's birthday parties only by pitying mothers, and occasionally beaten up, as most boys are at some time or another. It didn't bother John at all, but then again, he never had never had to let it, that was Harriet's job.

Harriet understood him, quite well -despite the fact that she was always gone on the weekends and after seven o'clock at night- still, they didn't, by any means, get on. John spent most of his time with school friends, or in his room working on homework. Harriet spent her time watching telly, on the phone, or away at some undisclosed location. She was kind, though, and listened to him, really listened. She was like a combination of his mother and his best friend, and it worked just fine for him, but his mother didn't like it. Honestly, John wasn't sure why he bothered with taking care of his mother after Harriet began to change. She slept most of the day, left bottles all over the house, and shouted at the daytime dramas with Harriet. He wasn't daft, though, he knew his mother had slumped into some sort of mental condition. That didn't bother him, and he just set to work on his project for class the next day. They began to make long, unannounced outings a regular occurrence, but it didn't bother John, no, not at all. It didn't bother him when strange men came home with his mother, or when Harriet changed her name and her hair, and her clothes. It didn't bother him when his mother announced that she was sending him to boarding school, or when Harry (as she had changed her name), moved out without a single word of warning. That didn't bother John, and that was the simple truth of it.

He made his school his home, sometimes staying over Christmas holiday, and wishing that summer holiday didn't have to come so soon. Work, really hard work, became his favorite thing. He worked all year long, fall to winter, winter to spring, spring to summer, and so on. He took up drawing in his free time, what little of it there was, and he drew pretty things, and progressed to beautiful things, as all artists do in time. He got very creative in medical school, and even considered transferring to art school, but every summer, he went back to his house. Every summer, he returned to the drunken relatives, to Harry's latest girlfriend, and eventually to Clara. He liked Clara, and she was much like Harry used to be, nice, protective, a sweet maternal figure he needed in his life. Of course, Harry did wrong by her, and of course, a divorce was in order. So he worked himself into a perfectly normal man, despite slight lapses back into the creative experimental boy he had been, and it was the army that had taken care of that. He became Doctor Watson or Mr. Watson, the name "John" being no longer needed, or even acknowledged. He lost sight of what was most important to him to begin with, but grownups do, in time. That didn't bother him, though, because he didn't let it.

It was all good and fine for him, really. Even with his nightmares of Afghanistan, he felt like he could handle being alone for a little bit. 'A bit', however, often turns into 'a while' which often turns into 'too long', and eventually comes to 'forever'. As mentioned before, however, Mr. Watson was a grownup and had decided 'forever' was alright with him, figuring that he could always go on dates with nice, normal girls if he wanted, living a normal life as an ex-soldier.

But still, deep down, a part of him lay long forgotten, like a grain of sand in an oyster. Without him even knowing, this grain began to twitch with life, and with life it fluttered and stirred about in the pit of where his heart used to be, stirring up the dusts of loneliness and age. The activity drove him to a therapist, but it didn't satisfy him, and the activity hit its peak the day he bumped into Mike Stamford. _Mr._ Watson went to the coffee stand with Mike, and didn't know, _Mr._ Watson got on the subway with Mike, and didn't know, _Mr._ Watson came through the main doors of St. Bart's, and didn't know, but the minute the lab door opened, and he saw the elegant creature, with long back bent over a microscope, with bright eyes flashing their greeting, everything stopped. And _John_ Watson knew, deep down, where the forming pearl had caused so much pain before, that he had found the missing half, the one left behind on primary school playgrounds and battlegrounds of Afghanistan, reflected just perfectly in the eyes of a man, a living, breathing man. _John _Watson, who once had a pearl sitting in the place of his heart, began to feel odd when the man spoke, and when he moved. After the man had gone, and he could concentrate on what was happening to himself, he realized with a glorious flutter in his stomach that he felt a pulse beating strongly in his chest. The rhythm was small, and a beat only half of a heart could beat, but that didn't bother John at all, and sitting there against the tree, he smiled to himself because he knew that nothing ever would ever bother him again...at least, not really.

A/N: Well, I never thought I'd be writing a summary of the life of John Watson. I think I edited that last paragraph close to nine times, counting the one I did right after I published this on here. I really have nothing more to say, because I'm tired and the smell of pipe smoke is caught in my nose and as annoying as it is, I find it oddly fitting considering what I'm writing about. I hope you guys are having a much more relaxed day than I am, because mine has been…one of those days. Cheers! :)


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